Conventional wireless network protocols often are based on, and share characteristics with, the architecture for physical wired networks. Some conventional wireless networks use medium access methods and frame route discovery methods that are similar to the wired networks. For example, conventional wireless networks may implement collision avoidance techniques such as listen before transmit, and their frames are routed from a source to a sink (i.e., a destination node) through a series of sequential routing devices or across a series of point-to-point links. More specifically, as an example, a conventional wireless network setup can require a transmission from, in order, a source node, a relay node R, and a destination node, such that if the transmission from the source node to relay node R fails, the entire transmission process fails.
To confirm delivery of transmission in a wireless protocol, end to end acknowledge messages may be delivered by a destination to the source (“sink-to-source”), or, intermediate acknowledge messages (“per-hop”) may be delivered from each routing device in the path, or both techniques may be used (per-hop and sink-to-source). For example, a destination node may transmit a acknowledge message upon receiving a transmission message. The acknowledge message can route back to the source node via a series of sequential routing devices or across a series of point-to-point links. More specifically, as an example, a wireless network may require an acknowledge message to be sent from a destination node to a relay node R, and from the relay node R to a source node, in that order, such that if the transmission from the destination node to relay node R fails, the entire acknowledgement process fails.
Some wireless network protocols may insert random delays between transmissions by nodes to attempt to avoid collisions. The random delays can lead to an unmanageable amount of time being spent for an entire transmission and may not efficiently prevent non-participating nodes from transmitting collision-prone transmissions.